Pediatric Cochlear Implantation

Abstract

This study demonstrates the ability of cochlear implantation to meet or surpass parental expectations in 3 important outcome domains: communication, listening to speech, and the development of speech and language.

Sequential bilateral cochlear implantation in children: Parents’ Perspective and device use

“…Unlike the parents of children with a unilateral CI in a study by Nikolopoulos et al [14], most parents in the current study responded slightly less positive to the questions on whether they expected the operation would help their child with ''communication'', ''listening to speech without lipreading'' and ''speech and language development''. This is not surprising as the children in our study already had good speech perception skills prior to CI2 surgery; the children in the study by Nikolopoulos et al [14] did not have these skills prior to unilateral implantation.…”

“…This is not surprising as the children in our study already had good speech perception skills prior to CI2 surgery; the children in the study by Nikolopoulos et al [14] did not have these skills prior to unilateral implantation. In contrast, parents in our study were more hopeful about postoperative changes in sound localization, which their child was not able to achieve with their first implant.…”

Parental perspectives of children using cochlear implant

“…In this study, although the children have been developing their oral language after the CI surgery, many parents reported concerns regarding the quality of their children's speech, similar to other studies (4,15,21,23) . It is known that the intelligibility of speech is developed in a longer temporal scale than the perception of speech, improving throughout the years after the CI surgery (24) , being possible that the quality of speech of these children may improve over time.…”

Family Quality of Life Following Early Identification of Deafness

“…These findings substantiate previous reports that the use of cochlear implants at an early age with an oral communication method is associated with higher satisfaction with speech production and perception. This finding coincides with Nikolopoulos, Lloyd, Mphil, and O'Donoghue (2001), in which 98% of parents indicated that their child's outcomes after cochlear implantation met or surpassed their expectations. There is a large body of literature documenting improvements in speech perception, speech production, and general language skills following cochlear implantation (Bohnert, Spitzlei, Lippert, & Keilmann, 2007;Kirk, Miyamoto, Ying, Perdew, & Zuganellis, 2003;Ross & Lyon, 2007;Sharma, Dorman, Spah, & Todd, 2002;Zwolan et al, 2004).…”